


cycling

by faelicy



Series: from our edges to the in-between [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Ambivalence, Living Together, M/M, Post-Series, Vignettes, relationships are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 16:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10193864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faelicy/pseuds/faelicy
Summary: Ah,Victor thinks,I haven’t forgiven Yuuri for Barcelona at all.(Victor, Yuuri, and the limbo of togetherness.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am 100% sub-zero concentrated salt water.

In St. Petersburg, they settle into a routine. Alarm beeps. Morning snuggle. Get up. Victor starts the coffee machine. Shower. Feed Maccachin. Yuuri makes breakfast or they grab something from the pantry. Head to the rink and spend most of the day trying to one-up each other. Their rink mates snicker, of course.

(Originally, Yuuri tried to resist, but eventually he just gave in and played along.)

Sometimes, they even show up to practice late. Yuri gags, Yakov yells at them, Yuuri apologizes repeatedly, and Victor grins sheepishly, rubbing his neck.

\---

There are days when Victor wakes, thrumming with inspiration, eager to go to the rink, to skate it out. The days he feels like confessing his love all over again, with his routines and his body.

Today is not one of those days.

He’s tired. He wants to sleep.

Coaching and competing. Coaching and skating. He needs to prove to Yuuri that he can handle both…because, if he doesn’t, then Yuuri will…Yuuri will…

Oh. There’s more hair in the shower drain than usual.

\---

After Yuuri arrives from Japanese Nationals and shares an hour-long reunion hug with Victor and Maccachin, he makes katsudon in the apartment, as part of their celebratory ritual. Or tries to, because Victor still clings to him like a barnacle, and this severely restricts his movements.

No, not a barnacle. You can peel barnacles off their rocks, with enough effort. He’s a limpet. It’s impossible to peel off a limpet. Yuuri would know, he’s tried. He’s trying, right now.

Victor makes a mournful noise even as his face is glued to Yuuri’s shoulder.

Yuuri sighs fondly and strokes Victor’s hair. It can’t be helped; they’ll eat dinner an hour late tonight.

\---

“Yuuri…you…what are you doing?” Victor stands at the apartment entrance. He’d returned earlier today, from an interview.

Yuuri’s starts where he’s sitting at the counter and turns towards Victor. His eyes are wide and brown, like that of a doe caught in headlights. There’s a plastic bag on his right, and crumbs all around him.

Hadn’t they just bought that loaf of white bread this morning? There’s only one slice left, now.

“I was hungry,” Yuuri says blandly. “And this was the cheapest thing.”

\---

They invite Yuri over to play old video games. Victor tires of losing in the first round and hangs back to watch instead, having decided he finds the slow change of Yuri’s face to vibrant puce more entertaining.

Yuri finally throws down the controller when Yuuri lands a 99-hit combo, screaming something about Asian stereotypes.

\---

Victor remembers playing Kholodno-goryacho[1] as a young child. He’d always hated that game.

Two steps forward, one step back. One step forward, two steps back.

Oh, you’ve gone too far! Oh, you haven’t gone far enough! But if you don’t move at all, you’ll slide backwards, you see.

“Victor?” Yuuri shifts next to him. He must have been tossing and turning too much.

He pastes on a smile. Rolls over to face Yuuri.

He’s taking another step, now. Is it forward or back?

“It’s nothing, Yuuri. Go back to sleep.”

\---

Yuuri lands a perfect quadruple loop. The rink is silent for a couple of seconds, then everything bursts into noise. Everyone is cheering, skating towards him. Even Yuri has put his phone down, tightening his skates as he yells from his ungraceful sprawl on the bench.

Victor, who’d started the sprint forward before anyone else, launches himself right at him. The impact sends them skidding across the ice, and the rink resounds with laughter and whistles. Yakov’s shrieking something from the sidelines that sounds like ‘you idiots’ and ‘not safe.’

Victor’s eyes are shining, and Yuuri thinks his mouth is forming the words ‘I knew you could do it,’ but he can’t really hear above the din. He wraps his arms around Victor’s neck and pulls him down again.

\---

_Let’s end this._

Victor jerks awake. He’s trembling all over. Yuuri is still sleeping. The tremors aren’t stopping, so he hushes Maccachin and gets out of bed. Dresses, goes to the kitchen. Starts the coffee maker, grabs his mug.

 _Just believe in me_ , Yuuri had said. _You don’t have to say anything._

Oh, that’s rich. And how, pray tell, is Victor supposed to believe in him, if he can so easily throw out such words? If he can earnestly think Victor should leave him? That hypocrite…!

Just stay close to him and say nothing? A doll could do that! If that’s all Yuuri wants, a doll would be good enough. Why, you could even conveniently throw it away…!

The mug is shaking; everything is shaking.

 _Ah,_ Victor thinks, _I haven’t forgiven Yuuri for Barcelona at all._

He shouldn’t hold it against him. Yuuri can’t help it, with his decade-long span of continuous self-deprecation. He’s delicate, his heart is delicate, his feelings are delicate. It’s always about Yuuri’s feelings, Yuuri’s feelings, Yuuri’s feelings…

What about Victor’s own feelings?

The mug shatters against the tiled floor. He bends over to pick up the pieces; he can’t let Yuuri see…

_Yuuri can’t help it._

_Well,_ that ugly part of him hisses, _neither can I._

\---

Victor takes Yuuri to the library. They agree that the best way to practice his fledgling Russian, other than conversations, is to read books with translations available, or those he’s already read in a different language. That way he can compare. Then, he can start borrowing whatever he likes.

Victor stands back and watches as Yuuri flits from shelf to shelf. His eyes are sparkling.

Victor’s chest feels tight.

\---

There was a book Yuuri read some time ago, and a scene[2] that resonated with him.

A man, after three nights in a drunken haze, returned ashamed, to the apartment where he lived with a single mother and her daughter. He looked through the crack of the door and saw the most beautiful sight: mother and daughter bonding, chasing a small rabbit.

_Do you think Daddy will be surprised?_

The man was overcome with the urge to get down on his knees.

_They were happy, the two of them. I’d been a fool to come between them. I might destroy them both if I were not careful. A humble happiness. A good mother and child._

And so he'd left, abandoning them.

Most would probably sympathize with the mother and daughter. Yuuri does, too. But Yuuri also empathizes with the man.

He supposes that makes him an awful person.

_I was an animal lower than a dog, lower than a cat. A toad. I sluggishly moved—that’s all._

Well, it’s nothing he didn’t know already, anyway.

\---

Despite the exhaustion from practice, Yuuri always devotes at least an hour every night to studying Russian. He listens to recordings, dutifully copies out passages, reads through the novels he borrowed.

He still remembers the first conversation he managed to hold with Victor entirely in Russian. He remembers the way Victor’s eyes shone, the same way they had when Yuuri landed that quadruple loop.

He wants Victor to make that expression forever.

\---

There are two types of romantics in this world.

The first believes that all problems can be fixed.

The innocent, trusting optimist soothes the troubled, brooding soul. The partner standing on the shore reaches down and pulls the one drowning in the sea to safe land. Two individuals, injured and lame, lend each other their strength and become more than the sum of their parts.

The second believes that some problems can never be fixed.

The optimist is sucked into the whirlpool of self-destruction surrounding their lover. The partner drowning in the sea flails and drags the one on the shore down with them. The blind lead the blind, and they both fall into a hole.

Well, there is one main similarity. In both cases, at least they’d always stay together. There’s beauty in that, too. Yuuri closes the book.

There are two types of romantics in this world.

He wonders which one Victor is. He wonders which one _he_ is.

\---

Standing by the sea, Victor faces Yuuri, intertwining their fingers. He pulls their joined hands upwards and presses his lips to Yuuri’s ring. Yuuri does the same to his.

“Let’s go back.”

“Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1Russian version of Hot and Cold  
> 2From _No Longer Human_ , **Third Memorandum, Part One**. Quotes are from there, as well.


End file.
